Journey to Paracas

On their second day in Peru, students enrolled in the Chesapeake Semester boarded a bus and headed south along the coast to Paracas and the Marine-protected Ballestas Islands. They saw the abundance of Peru’s guano birds for the first time. The concentration of guano spurred the Peruvian economic engine of guano (fertilizer) export to First World countries up until the turn of the 20th century. Today the guano harvest has dramatically decreased and is heavily regulated by the Peruvian government. Despite the decades that have elapsed since the guano glut, the method of harvest has made little advancement. Labor is still supplied from the same two remote Andean villages that have supplied labor for generations. Under the government’s supervision and scientific management these workers migrate seasonally up and down the coast selecting harvests sites based upon guano volume, bird migration, and nesting habits for less impactful mining.

The abundance of the nutrient rich anchoveta makes it a highly sought after source of protein and oil for a variety of marine wildlife. These attributes- similar to the menhaden of the Chesapeake- also make the anchoveta a target for commercial harvest to be reduced into fish oil and fish protein. To understand this more fully students toured a state-of-the-art reduction facility located only a few miles from the reserve.

Michael Hardesty '05

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The Chesapeake Semester team didn’t stay in Lima long. The team was up before day-break and on the road heading south to UPHC-CSA’s biological research station at the Guano Reserve in Punta San Juan. Before...